Conversion Guide: Posable Suits

I've been working on how to enable dynamic posing of crisis suits. In other words: being able to change the pose of crisis suits easily. This tutorial shows how I did this. Please note that this is risky and the conversion will be very delicate.Below are the tools I used:[gal_img]1360[/gal_img]You don't have to have these exact tools to do this, just something to create the same effect. The first tool was a conical sanding bit for my dremel, the second was the handle of my exacto with a piece of wire in it (Instead of in the blade.)The first step was dremeling out the ball sockets on the limbs. Using the dremel I bore conical indentations in the center of the ball. The second step was making holes for the wire, which was accomplished by heating the wire until it was red hot and piercing the torso and limbs in the center of the sockets.When you make the cones for the limbs make sure that you are centered on the inside of the ball where it can't be seen, too big and you've ruined the model. Secondly, when you make the holes for the wire in the conical depression, the legs should go in straight and the arms should be bent at 90 degree angles like so.[gal_img]1361[/gal_img]I hope you can see that. This also means making these holes down the upper arm instead of straight through the thin arm-plate.Once you have made all the holes you are going to need to cut the wire and dry fit the arms and legs until they fit as close to the torso as possible.Do not glue them. Now the critical part: you need to get the wires into the limbs and get them sticking straight out of the socket, just like in the picture. Now super glue the wires to the arms. Let these dry for a long while, this glue needs to be set and fully hardened before continuing. The legs should be on a single piece of wire mounted like an axle. The hip wire should be glued to the torso first; this should also be dry and set before moving on.Ok so now you have the arms with wire and the torso with wire, and it's all dry.Scary time!Take one arm and the torso, drip a bit of super glue in the conical depression in the ball socket. Wipe out all the excess glue you want as little as possible in the ball, just enough for the wire to get some on it. You can also just dip the wire in the nozzle of your glue. Now fit the arm being very careful not to tilt the ball, you want all the glue to be on the inside of the conical depression. If glue gets on the outside of the ball don't glue it as you will secure the arm to the socket! This one arm needs to set and dry. All gluing should be set and dry before continuing with any more steps! Repeat above on the other arm.The legs should be done in the same way: glue in the cone and then fit to the torso. The head should only be glued to the wire and sit in its cradle on the torso. The reason for the conical depressions are, the wire needs to have room to move or it will not provide a full range of motion- also it's the only way to glue the pieces together without binding them at the joint lines.Finished![gal_img]1362[/gal_img][gal_img]1363[/gal_img]As I've mentioned above, this conversion will be very delicate and even if posed carefully, the model will still only last so long. If, and when, the wire breaks, just glue the arm on the end of as normal. A note on posing: two of the pictures above show the suit actually balanced on his own, but in the third pose he is on a stand.One method of mounting is only gluing one foot to the base giving the whole model range. A second method I found is making bases with different foot positions, and then just swapping them around the different models. Also this conversion is risky on the arms especially, so if you do attempt it, please realise that you could potentially disfigure your model. Well I hope a few of you are brave enough to try this or gain a few ideas so you can elaborate on this idea.